Yesterday was Yoshi’s last day at VMI. He wouldn’t believe me until we got home. This bed he is laying on is the one I kept at work for him. When he saw it at home he immediately layed down on it and began to reminisce on all the good times, and all the good treats he had at VMI.
He is pretty sad about not being able to go to work anymore. I know that with time he will get over it.
Care to guess what day it was yesterday?
As usual everything went perfectly fine. I even got to watch a bit of one of last nights hockey games! Now that makes a donation go by quickly.
Just a quick site announcement here. Gallery has released version 1.4.3
I have now upgraded to this version, and I am looking forward to trying out some of the new features (like automagic watermarks). You can fing my galleries here.
The upgrade procedure for Gallery is pretty simple, and I like that. I like that a lot. Next up Drupal (on my time off).
Yesterday myself, Sean, James, and Yoshi went for a jaunt at the dump. The trails were in prime condition, and the weather could not have been more agreeable! In short it was a spectacular spring ride.
Starting off from the parking lot, Yoshi limped a little as he trotted. Since he had hurt himslef a few weekends earlier, I wondered if he was going to be ok. As soon as I let him off leash, the limping went away. I decided I would keep an eye on him and make sure he was going to be fine.
Our plan was to climb the fireroad, find our way to North Ridge, then head down that to Lumpy Pants, and new trail that has a nice rock drop. The climb up was more difficult this week. This time I was riding my Bullit, and last week I was on my Chameleon. I shouldn’t be too surprised, there is probably close to a 10 pound difference between the bikes.
During the climb Yoshi seemed fine, but he was sticking pretty cose to me the whole way. Usually he is off running around more. I thought it was odd, but left it at that. Later on North Ridge, I noticed again that Yoshi was not acting like his normal self, and was sticking really close to me.
We came to the rock drop on Lumpy Pants, and I eyed it up a few times. There is a ride around, and I spied Yoshi running up and down that a few times. He was beginning to worry me, but there wasn’t much I could do. I did the rock drop once, then got the camera out to take a couple pics. While Sean was lining up for his second run, I realized I hadn’t seen Yoshi in a couple minutes.
Then it struck me. I couldn’t hear him either. I called him and whistled a couple times but nothing. A knot started to form in my stomach. I yelled for him, and whistled a few more times, and still nothing.
I hiked back up the trail a bit, and I thought I heard something, but it was just a bird. Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of white on North Ridge trail. It was Yoshi, and he was trotting the wrong direction on a different trail. I yelled, and he stopped. When he saw me he looked confused as to how he was supposed to get back to me. Usually he would just run through the bush but this time he refused to. I had to walk through the brush to coax him back the right way.
Something was definitely wrong with him. When the group was all assembled again, I told the guys that I had to get moving. Yoshi was not himself, and I just wanted to keep moving.
After Lumpy Pants, we rode down “Who’s Your Daddy”. I hadn’t been on the trail since the structures were cut down (over 2 years ago I think). This was quite a fun trail. Something I wasn’t expecting. After WYD, we took the fireroad down to Skull. I noticed Yoshi was being really slow, so I took it easy with him. He trotted the whole way back to the truck. Usually he will break into a gallop on the fireroad.
It was a good ride, but it was also a strange ride. I never did figure out what was up with Yoshi (he is fine today). My only theory is that maybe he didn’t want to go biking today. He has taken off on my during a ride once before. All is well that ends well I guess.
Friday I stopped at Office Depot to pick up a paper shredder that was on sale. I happened to browse the PDA aisle, and found a couple deals I just couldn’t pass up. The first was an SD card based Merriam-Webster Crossword Puzzles and Word Challenges. Regularly this used to be $30 or more, it was on blowout for $2.04
The other was Handmarks version of Scrabble for the PalmOS. That one used to be $40, and now it was on sale for $6.01! Such great deals cannot be passed on.
The crossword one is great, but I had to return the Scrabble. The box I had purchased was empty! Very dissapointing. I guess someone had ripped off Office Depot in the past, and noone noticed. It wasn’t a big deal getting my money back, but it was quite a shock when I opened the box!
The photo club has now switched to Wednesday evenings! I am pretty happy about this. It is much more enjoyable for me to get out during the evening and shoot pics rather than on a weekend morning.
This past Wednesday was our latest meeting, and the location was St Ann’s Academy. The grounds there provide an excellent backdrop for photography. The buildings are pristine, and we had an awesome blue sky overhead for some dramatic shots.
I haven’t developed my film yet, but here are my digital pics.
As if my last few days at this job aren’t hard enough, Fosters is on the roof installing a new air conditioner. This means a crane in the back lot, vehicles scattered around the parking lot, guys on the roof walking around, guys on the roof grinding, guys on the roof banging away, and guys knocking on the door to check circuit breakers so they don’t get electrocuted. All in all this is a very distracting environment right now.
The security device detectors are pretty much pointless to someone who is intent on stealing from the store. In almost all cases, the checkout counter is a good ten feet away (not talking just Thrifty’s here), so someone who is stealing can walk through it, and get out of the building before any staff member can really do anything about it.
In the case of Thrifty’s the guy walked out the front door, then sprinted away. A couple of Thrifty’s staff members chased after him, but he was gone, gone, gone.
Another time a few months ago I was in Sport Chek in the Bay Centre. I was browsing for some pants, and stumbled across a guy stuffing a shirt up his shirt. He knew he had been caught, and pretended to look at the shirt. He was acting very nervous and jittery. I walked away, pretending not to see anything, then went to find a staff member. In a flash the guy had disappeared, and before I could find someone, I heard the detector at the front of the store go off. What did the staff do? Nothing. They didn’t even notice that it had gone off. In a previous visit, after buying some shoes from them, when I walked out, the detector went off. I turned around, went back to the counter, and got the checout girl to deactivate their security device. Dude stealing a shirt gets away unpunished, yet me, the paying customer gets held up.
Their security system punishes their customers, but does NOTHING to stop or slow down people intent on stealing items.
Another time I walked out of the Bay in Mayfair mall, and again the clerk had forgotten to deactivate the tag. Their sensor went off, but I was already out in the mall. I turned around to go back in and realized that no staff member was even looking in my direction. Why bother wasting my time to go back into the store. I kept walking.
The rant is almost over I promise. One more quick little snippet.
While standing in line at Future Shop one day, someone who had just purchased a couple CDs was walking out of the store talking to a friend. Their security sensor went off, but the guy didn’t notice since he was talking to his friend. One of the clerks called out to him asking him to come back into the store, but he kept walking since he didn’t hear anything. The clerk never went after him, and she kind of just shrugged her shoulders. Good security system.
It all boils down to companies punishing their customers who follow the rules, yet are actualy innefective when it comes to punishing/thwarting those trying to circumvent paying.
I could go on and tie this in to copy controlled cds too. I can’t though. I have to go pick up Sue, then go watch the Canucks. Maybe more later though/
I forgot to mention that yesterday I posted my Easter Weekend gallery.
Some news in case some of the readers here didn’t get my email.
This past Wednesday I handed in my letter of resignation to Voice Mobility because I have signed on with NewHeights Software. I am pretty excited to be working for them, and I think it is going to be a great opportunity for me.
I shouldn’t have to say it, but I am sad that I will be leaving Voice Mobility. It has been a great experience being here, but it is time to move on. My last day at the shack is April 28, and I start at NewHeights on May 10. It is bizarre to think that I will no longer be walking into the building at 3318 Oak St. I have been coming to this building 5 out of 7 days for the past 6 years!
This is a very big step for me, and something I am looking forwrd to. I know that I have made the right decision for me. I am at the point in my career where I want to move up in the ranks, and that is simply not possible at VMI.
In an earlier post I said “when it rains it pours”. At the time I was just starting to set up my interviews. Over a period of a few days I had set up 4 interviews. I was pretty stressed about how quickly my time was taken up, and how I would have to miss work time to go to the interviews. Fortunately I was able to schedule the interviews late in the afternoon so that I could go in to work extra early so I could leave early. I was also aided in the fact that the bulk of the interviews were during the week before the Easter weekend, and the office was pretty quiet. I have a couple hours of time to make up still, but I will manage that in the upcoming week.
Sometime in the future I might write about how the NewHeights interview went. That in itself is a pretty crazy story!